James looks down. His clothes are quickly becoming soaked with the warm, dark fluid bubbling from a region of intense pain in his abdomen. His strength seems to be leaving him at the same rate as that precious resource.

James looks up. A man still stands before him, a twisted mixture of fear and desperation on his face...

“Incoming – heavy.”

Adam Dax heard the words, spoken calmly inside his head by his own voice, and knew at once not to gamble on the implications of this warning, passed directly into his consciousness by the sensory systems of the gigantic machine he piloted. His senses were already massively enhanced by the interface...

A bowed figure, wooden staff in hand, picked his way wearily along the muddy trail in the pouring rain, his battered leather boots sinking deep into the waterlogged ground with almost every step, his tattered woollen cloak and ragged clothes heavy with water. Every few feet he had no choice but to splash through a pool of...